Vol 1 Chapter 13 (1/2)

VOLUME 1

Chapter 13: The Hikikomori G.o.ds

I could feel it through my skin that the air had changed.

The smells around me had also changed. Instead of the familiar smell of my room, I could now discern the scent of blood and gunpowder.

When I came to, I found myself in the exact center of a devastated cla.s.sroom.

“……!!”

I touched my own face and stood there in pure shock.

It was easy to explain what exactly had happened.

We had all been sucked into the game world.

“S-Sasami-san!”

My brother and Kagami both tried to desperately get to me.

I was surrounded on all sides by monsters.

I didn’t have time to think, but in my daze just swung the Divine Beast Sword I had in my hand.

I was pretty weak in real life so I had never swung a sword before, but my body was surprisingly nimble.

Soon, all the monsters around me had been knocked down, and they had disappeared.

“Ohh, you’re quite strong.”

Kagami seemed eternally calm even in a situation like this, and I looked to her with tear-stricken eyes.

“W-What happened?!”

“Exactly what it looks like.”

It honestly annoyed me how calm Kagami could be as she walked around opening up the treasure boxes and gold dropped by the fallen monsters. Was there a place in the universe where she would actually be shaken?

“It seems that somehow, we’ve been sucked into the game world. We were most likely hypnotized by what was showing on the computer screen, and our spirits only were sucked in… I cannot seem to use any of my divine powers here, and none of the abilities my body should be equipped with seem to be working. We are most likely in a situation comparable to dreaming.”

“Dreaming? This is a dream?”

And yet, the air I was breathing in and the feeling of cutting the monsters down all seemed way too real…

But most importantly, I had no idea what was going on.

“Why is all this… what’s going to happen to us?”

“Well…”

Kagami walked to the wall that was now lined with broken gla.s.s and vacantly gazed at the huge evil army, as well as the monster at the center of that army, Yamata no Orochi.

“Shouldn’t you be asking that to Mr. Hostile over there?”

The rumble of the earth and ferocious roars pierced my ears as a war unfolded outside.

The academy students and teachers… no, all the guardians from the entire world who had been studying and honing their skills for this very moment had gathered together and were battling against the demon king and his army.

There were also faces I recognized, like that cat-eared headmaster.

Lighting struck down while holy lights evaporated monster after monster. Swords and spears whirled around and around.

However, the monsters just kept coming and coming without an end in sight.

Everyone was fighting desperately, but our numbers were limited… one, and then another guardian fell.

They were broken into little pieces and then terminated.

It was hard to watch this cruel scene of war and carnage.

The cat-eared headmaster was heroically twirling around with her iron wires when Yamata no Orochi caught sight of her.

“Nyah?! What are you doing nyah, let me go nyah!”

The Yamata no Orochi’s long tongue wrapped around the headmaster’s limbs and lifted her into the air.

“D-Don’t worry all, just keep on fighting nyah! Never give up, and I’m sure-“

Like that, the demon king clamped down on the headmaster with his jaw, and a burst of blood flew tragically through the air.

Her body was torn apart from the middle, and this cute young girl with cat ears was bisected in midair and terminated.

Recoiling at this gruesome sight, the morale of the Academy forces collapsed.

Even the strongest warriors from Valhalla had come to join the fray, but the enemies were numberless, and Yamata no Orochi himself was just too strong.

Every time one of his eight heads moved, another guardian met his end in a spray of blood.

It was like watching the G.o.d of Ends destroying everything.

“Can’t do this… he’s too strong…”

I groaned.

“This is like gambling… you can’t win if the casino is rigging the cards. This Yamata no Orochi is one of the G.o.ds, right? So through an alteration, he’s rewritten the rules of this world, and has made it so no player can win against him… we can’t do anything here.”

“That’s what it seems like.”

Kagami pondered the situation as we watched the player getting overrun.

“Normal players would get wiped out immediately. Even for us, this may be dangerous. I’ve tried my utmost to transfer the abilities and divine rights possessed by my real body into the game world, but this Yamata no Orochi’s divinity is just too high… as long as he’s obstructing me, I will not be able to move those divine rights into this game…”

“W-What about oniichan?”

I had some hope in my brother, but Kagami shook her head.

“That’s no good. Sensei doesn’t know how to use the ‘supernatural powers’ that come with having a G.o.d’s power. Having a bullet is pointless if you don’t have the gun… and our enemy has a divinity comparable to that of the Supreme G.o.d… And even if we properly channeled his powers and tried to defeat this enemy, if our opponent properly concentrated and countered our efforts, I do not think we would be able to easily deal with him.”

“I wish I could properly channel oniichan’s powers…”

I did have these “supernatural powers.”

I knew how to use these divine powers, and use them well.

“But I barely have any divinity right now… and I can’t transfer my spirituall powers from my real self to my game self… so I can’t channel and control oniichan’s powers…”

My rather twisted relations.h.i.+p with my brother was backfiring on us.

“But I do believe I’ve deduced what the aim of this Yamata no Orochi is.”

Kagami glared up at the sky, almost as if she was trying to re-establish a connection with her real body.

“When I was playing this Yamata no Orochi SNS, I was flooded with quite a peculiar sensation. It almost felt like I was breaking apart, that I was forgetting my physical body and completely entering the game world. So this is an example of emotional transfer… when we play the game, we forget about our own bodies, and end up completely becoming our game personas.”

Kagami seemed irritated and brushed her hair up with a hand.

“And then, using that moment when we forget ourselves, using that gap, the Yamata no Orochi forcibly separates our bodies from our psyches. Just as we are completely immersed in the game, we suddenly can no longer return to the real world… most likely, our real bodies now look like soulless corpses and are all that remain of us in that world….”

Kagami pointed at Yamata no Orochi and made a declaration.

“And then, that large deity over there traps the player’s psyches in the game world. The students can no longer go to school, and are stuck here in this game. They are devoured by the Yamata no Orochi, and their real bodies also become soulless corpses.”

So those students weren’t staying home because they had gotten addicted to a game and didn’t care about school anymore.

Those students, as well as the problematic hikikomori that had been popping up all over j.a.pan because they were playing Yamata no Orochi SNS…

They weren’t just trying to distance themselves from reality.

Rather, they probably just couldn’t return to that reality anymore.

“In addition, the Yamata no Orochi defeats players while they’re in the game, and by killing them, he reduces them to unconscious particles of light and takes them in. They thus fall under a deep, dreamless sleep, not even being able to think as they become just another part of the Yamata no Orochi.”

Kagami then c.o.c.ked her head to the side and seemed puzzled.

“But there is still something that I don’t understand… and it is the fact that the Yamata no Orochi is not doing anything more than that. If he was a G.o.d with evil intentions, he wouldn’t just leave the soulless corpses of the people alone. He could even manipulate their bodies and begin an invasion of the real world.”

I felt a s.h.i.+ver run down my spine.

I imagined the sight of these husks of people becoming the Yamata no Orochi’s p.a.w.ns and moving around like zombies, attacking other people on the streets.

But… such a thing had not happened yet in the real world.

The Yamata no Orochi was fully satisfied with just stealing people’s psyches.

Why?

Was this G.o.d devoid of ambition?

But if that’s true, why in the first place was he doing evil things like devouring people here?

He was a baffling monstrosity, and I couldn’t make heads nor tails of what he was truly after.

“He’s almost behaving like the Yamata no Orochi of legend… just desiring more and more sacrifices and devouring them greedily, and while he has a lot of power, he never does anything more than that. It’s a mystery. If he has that much power, he should be able to make the real world into his own kingdom.

–

“That’s ‘cuz he isn’t interested in the real world at all.”

–

A small voice suddenly echoed through the room.

When I heard that voice, I turned around and saw the eldest and youngest Yagami sister standing behind me.

It seemed they had returned from the bathroom.

No, wait, this was the game world.

Does this mean… they had also gotten trapped here?!

“Hey there, don’t worry. We’ve entered this world of our own free will.”

Tsurugi was wearing her biker’s jacket, and she muttered that with a bored expression on her face.